I'm currently learning Japanese, and I realise that the language has something known as a topic, something which is unheard of in English.

According to Wikipedia,

It is written with the hiragana は, which is normally pronounced ha, but when used as a particle is pronounced wa. It is placed after whatever is to be marked as the topic.

So, accordingly, if I say 車は新しいです, then 車 is the topic.

But, I was given this:

佐藤さんは会社員です。
佐藤さんも日本人です。 (X)

The second sentence is wrong. From my understanding, you can use も when the topic remains the same in a conversation. In this case, the topic is 佐藤さん, so why couldn't you use も then? My teacher told me 会社員 is the topic, but shouldn't the topic be 佐藤さん?

Were you given two sentences and told one is correct and the other is not? Or were you given a text comprising of the two and told the second sentence does not fit into the context?
– macrafAug 30 '17 at 11:35

1

English does have topics, but it is a subject-prominent language. Japanese is topic-prominent.
– snailboat♦Aug 30 '17 at 11:48

So what would you like to know? Because I see no logical connection between the question what is a topic and the example you posted. And your teacher rather did not mean the topic had been 会社員. On top of that, what was the intention behind a "given this"? Your teacher "gave you this text"?
– macrafAug 30 '17 at 12:04

@macraf the topic is 佐藤さん? Or is it 会社員? (in the first sentence) That's my question.
– KyomaAug 30 '17 at 12:07

1 Answer
1

You are correct that 佐藤さん is the topic in these sentences, but your understanding that も can be used "when the topic remains the same" is incorrect.

The actual usage of も is the opposite - it introduces a new topic (or other element in the sentence) to which the same statement applies. The word to which も is attached should be the only element in the statement that does change, not the only element that doesn't.

So the following pair of sentences would make sense:

佐藤さんは会社員です。 (Mr Sato is a businessman.)
田中さんも会社員です。 (Mr Tanaka is also a businessman.)

But the pair you suggested makes no sense, because も is attached to the same thing in both sentences.

The confusion may arise because the English word "also" actually acts on the entire sentence rather than any specific word, and so can function identically regardless of which element has changed. For instance:

Mr Sato is a businessman.
Mr Sato is also a Japanese person.

In English, this makes sense and has the exact same structure as the above pair, even though this time it's the latter element that has changed. In Japanese, however, the structure of this pair would be different - you would need to attach も to the latter element:

佐藤さんは会社員です。
（佐藤さんは）日本人でもあります。

In these examples, the topic (佐藤さん) remains the same, so it can and usually would be omitted in the second sentence. も in this case is not attached to the topic, but to the predicate 日本人です (which has to be expanded into the fuller form 日本人であります when も is used).

In a sentence with an ordinary verb rather than です, the usage of も is a little more straightforward - it simply replaces は if the topic changes, が if the subject changes, or を if the object changes. So: